Babcock International has said that its helicopter businesses originally flew fewer hours due to Covid-19 but many of its staff are working hard to fight the virus.

Babcock has two helicopter divisions: one supporting offshore platforms and the other focused on emergency missions – emergency medical services; firefighting; and search and rescue. It also has a fixed-wing military flight division.

“In the early stages of the pandemic in Europe, we experienced lower primary flying hours in our Aviation business in Italy and Spain as population lockdowns led to fewer emergency missions,” said the company in a statement to investors. “This was partly offset by an increase in secondary flying hours as we transferred patients between hospitals to alleviate congestion as the pandemic spread.”

“Across many parts of Europe, as well as Australia and the UK, our aerial emergency medical services teams are playing a courageous role helping governments and health services fight the spread of COVID-19 and we are proud of the contribution our teams are making,” said the company in a statement to investors.

Babcock is also working with an established medical equipment company to produce 10,000 ventilators.

“While we have a strong short and long-term order book, the impact of COVID-19 for the next financial year is uncertain. We continue to model a range of scenarios and stress tests as circumstances evolve, and more information on the impact of COVID-19 becomes available, and will provide an update with our full year results,” said the company.

“We are taking actions to mitigate the financial impact of COVID-19 including reducing and deferring non-essential operating and capital expenditure where possible, without impacting customer delivery. We will consider the use of government programmes to help manage areas of inactivity where they exist and we have postponed the annual pay increase for the senior management team.